


knower of things

by Yellow



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Lots of sniping, M/M, Pre-Relationship, mentioned canonical illness, sometimes you're in a strata where severea and galenica are in charge and that's fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-21 06:30:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17637551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yellow/pseuds/Yellow
Summary: samol calls the meeting. samot and samothes come to neutral ground, one of severea's floating cities, to discuss how they can help each other.





	knower of things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [imperialhare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperialhare/gifts).



> dear linda, i hope this feeds you even a small morsel of the content you crave.

The road is rougher than Samot would have thought.

His horse kicks up dirt, turning its white legs a dusty brown. Were he travelling with a retinue, he’d have it go slow, trotting placidly to the cities in the sky. But he is alone, and Samot wants very much to feel the brisk spring wind in his hair. 

The floating cities are visible from far away, like oddly shaped, dark clouds rising over the horizon. Samot urges his horse faster and they ride.

 

As he nears the first shadow, passing over him like the sudden onset of night, a large, bright blue bird swoops down and lands in front of him. Samot holds his horse as it rears. He pats it and swings himself off.

The bird tilts their head at him and Samot smiles past his annoyance. “Good afternoon,” he says, pushing his hair back into place.

The bird’s crest puffs. Samot stares. 

“Who vouches?” they say.

“Severea,” Samot says, placid smile fixed on his face. The blue bird puffs up their wings and huffs. 

“...Very well,” they say. They stare a moment longer at Samot, then, “I will check.” With a flap of their wings, they are off.

Samot taps his finger on his elbow and wonders idly if he should have taken bird form. He’s partial to an indigo bird that looks like its wings were dipped in gold ink. But he likes the human form best, and he's heard that Samothes may not not be able to change at all. And then there's always the tempting fun of shocking the bluebird by taking wing right in front of him. But that could wait.

 

The bird flies back down, landing off-kilter. Their left talons scrape the stones before their right. They balance themself and say, slow, “She vouches. Very well.” They turn and wait for Samot to follow.

 

The floating city is a marvel. Samot is not a city builder or an architect but the way the bridges frame the sun as they climb into the city square is marvellous enough that Samot itches for his charcoals.

 

It’s not the grandest building they come to, but one made almost entirely of colored glass. The blues fade into greens fade into yellows, like an ocean meeting the shore, and the reds and oranges at the top rival the majestic sunset behind them. Samot thinks for a moment of what it would be like to have a throne room not in a tent. Though his is filled with furs and velvets and is comfortable for its many purposes, he thinks about a room with high arches and gold and books. 

They travel up large stone stairs set with gems and come to a smaller room lined with dark purple glass. The bluebird whistles a high note and then pushes the door open.

 

“Samot, the Boy who Apologized, the Boy King in Leisure, Knower of Things, vouched for by Severea.” The bluebird steps aside. 

Samol laughs, deep and joyous. 

“You have to make things hard every time, hmm?” Samol says. Samot ducks his head, slight, smiling. It’s been a long time. 

There’s another figure at the table, dark and handsome, with a broad jaw, broad shoulders and broad hands. Samot has just come from the Plains of Celebration; he thinks automatically about what those hands would feel like on his back, on his throat. How they would feel just to hold. 

He looks up and Samothes is staring back at him, eyebrow raised, like he could tell what Samot was thinking. But he quickly looks down, coughing. 

Samol thumps him on the back.

“Samot, you’ve met Samothes before.”

“Briefly,” Samot murmurs. “I was young then.”

“So was I,” Samothes says, voice rich. 

“Not as young.” Samot was barely past shadow, something between wolf and boy, looking out from behind Samol’s legs.

A bald woman steps into the room. Her dress fans around her as if floated by an unseen wind. Samot raises a hand to greet her.

She rolls her eyes at him.

“Half the city is in an uproar,” Severea says. “You had to use my name?”

Samot grins. “Do you not vouch?” he asks, mock-surprised.

She groans. 

“Welcome to neutral ground,” she says. “Do your business and try not to harass my citizens?” It is not a suggestion.

Samot glances over at Samothes. He looks like he’s trying not to laugh. Samot catches his eye and smiles at him, brief.

Samol leans back in his chair, then smacks his hands on his knees. 

“Business, then,” he says, and pours Samot tea. He sits and takes a sip. It’s oversteeped, but he drinks it anyway. 

“Business,” Samot echoes, looking into his teacup. “Father, I still don’t see the need for this.”

Samol glances at him. “I can feel the plains you travel over buckling under the weight of your retinue. You need somewhere you can return to.”

Samot ducks his head, pouting. “My retinue does fine.”

Samol gives him a look. “And would they if Galenica and Severea didn’t allow you to roam their lands? If your retinue didn’t have you to bring them food and drink?”

“Why wouldn’t they have me?” Samot asks, and he feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Samothes tenses, Samot notes, pleased.

Samol rolls his eyes.

“Calm down, boy.”

With effort, Samot relaxes. 

“No one’s saying you’ll be gone. But I’ve seen gods die before. You can’t keep going on like this.”

He swirls the dregs of tea in his cup but says nothing. Samol huffs. 

“And you,” Samol says, looking at Samothes, “you’re going to lose all your people to Samot if you don’t let them build things of their own.”

Samothes huffs. 

“At least my people are taken care of.”

Samot looks at Samol. “You want me to rule with a tyrant?”

Samol looks back, steady. 

“I want you to learn from each other.”

“I think we’ve already seen there is nothing for us to learn.” Samothes pushes himself up from the table as Samot quietly seethes. “Father,” he says, nodding his head to Samol.

He makes it to the doorway before Samol says, quiet, “I’m dying.”

Samothes stops dead in his tracks. Samot lifts his head.

“Dad?” Samothes says.

“You heard me.” Samol leans back and crosses his arms behind his head. “Severea and Galenica love you both, but they are rulers. They are gods. And Severea is almost as old as I am. Don’t think it will be as easy when I die.”

“Father,” Samot says. “You’re not going to die.”

Samol rolls his head towards Samot, grinning. “You’ve always been just like this,” he says. “Doing what you want, come what may. But I’m telling you, boy, sometimes the Nothing bests us all. You should know that better than most.”

Samol stands. He puts a hand on Samothes’s shoulder, then walks out the door.

“Do you know how to heal him?”

Samot looks up. Samothes’s eyes are more orange than he remembered, like a bit of the sun broke off and stayed there. 

“No,” Samot says, rising to his feet. He doesn’t like being looked down on. “But I’ll find a way.”

“How will you do that with a travelling city?”

“Easier than you, who won’t let his people read.”

Samothes purses his lips.

“How would that help?”

“You made people the sun, but you don’t trust them to use your gifts to learn? To make their own?”

“They need me-”

“Our father needs us!”

Samothes stares at him, breathing heavy. “And?”

“Let me start a school,” Samot says. “And help me feed my people. And then I will find an answer.”

Samothes steps closer.

“You’re asking a lot.”

“Our father is dying.”

Samothes winces. He sighs.

“Fine. A small school. Selective.”

“Fine,” Samot says. 

“When can I expect results?”

Samot glares. “I do not work for you, Artificer Divine.”

“Nor do I work for you, Boy King.”

“If you did,” Samot snaps, “you might be less of a tightly wound dick.”

Samothes takes a step closer, then takes a breath. 

“We need to be civil.”

Samot looks up at him. “Fine.”

Samothes licks his lips and steps back.

“My retinue will make its way to your kingdom in a week.”

“Very well,” Samothes says. “We will be ready for you.”

Samot smiles and moves towards the windows.

“Tell our Father and Severea thank you for the tea.”

Samothes tilts his head, but nods.

“If you’re to leave, the door is-”

Samot transforms in moments, arms turning to gold tipped wings, head elongating into a beak. Samothes gapes. Samot whistles a goodbye and dives out the window. 

 

His horse is waiting for him at the border, where he morphs back into his human form between one step and the next. He tosses his hair over his shoulder. 

There was much to do in the next week, but at least it would be new. Interesting. 

Surprising. 

He wondered just how long it would take for him to get Samothes’s shoulders to relax, just a fraction.

Something else to study at his First University.

  
  



End file.
